DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Students booed, and many turned their backs on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as she gave the keynote address at Bethune-Cookman University's commencement Wednesday afternoon.

Many students and alumni had objected to having DeVos as speaker in part because they said the outreach by President Donald Trump and the education secretary to historically black schools is an empty gesture. But the president of the university defended her work as a philanthropist and her commitment to education.

Graduates came into the auditorium smiling, many with decorations plastered on their mortar boards, and listened to the ceremony politely, until university president Edison Jackson introduced Omarosa Manigault, an adviser to Trump. Students started booing. Jackson stopped, and said: "You don't know her. You don't know her story."

School leaders at the front of the room and some faculty applauded as he introduced DeVos to give her an honorary doctorate, but many students booed. When she began speaking, thanking Jackson, the room erupted with shouts. DeVos had to raise her voice as she thanked the moms at the ceremony.

About half of the 380 graduates turned their backs on her. Shouts continued as she spoke loudly, saying that one of the hallmarks of higher education and democracy is the ability to converse with whom they disagree.

Jackson warned the students. "Choose which way you want to go," he said sternly as the disruptions continued.

DeVos' speech at the Daytona Beach school, which was founded by a civil rights icon, came at a particularly fraught time.

Dominik Whitehead, a 2010 graduate of Bethune-Cookman working as a community organizer and political activist, said he didn't object to DeVos coming to campus to speak, but felt she was the wrong person to represent the school at commencement.

"Do not use Bethune-Cookman as a photo op," he said Tuesday, shortly before delivering petitions to the administration building. "Come to the table with something that is going to actually do something, in terms of policy, funding."